If Trump Won’t Fight Climate Change, Clothing Brands Will

In spite of the president's policies, brands, mayors, states, investors, universities, and Michael Bloomberg are taking matters into their own hands.

When President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate agreement last week and sent us careening toward a global environmental calamity—or as we called it, “a climate change-induced hellfire”—a historic collection of parties came together in response.

Officially named We Are Still In (potentially stepping on the toes of whatever committee is keeping bomber jackets cool for the millionth straight year), the pledge has been signed by 1,370 businesses and investors (along with 9 states, 275 colleges and universities, and 178 cities and counties), and the list is still growing. The states represent a Trump-sized-double-scoop $6.2 trillion of the GDP while the businesses’ collective revenue totals $1.7 trillion. Warby Parker’s co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal tells me that he pledged to We Are Still In to show that no matter what the current administration does, he wants to show the U.S. is committed to fighting climate change. It’s a promise Blumenthal hopes will assuage other nations who might consider joining the U.S. in ditching the agreement.

Of the 1,370 businesses involved in We Are Still In, thirty-five of those are apparel brands like Under Armour, Nike, Adidas, Gap, Levi’s, and the aforementioned Warby Parker. Not as many as you’d ideally see from an industry that is well known as one of the most devastating to the earth and climate. It can take almost 10,000 gallons of water to make a pair of jeans and Americans produce so much textile waste that recycling it would do the same amount of good as if 7.2 million people decided not to drive their cars anymore. Those are just two examples.

This is good PR for all these companies, and most of these promises and gestures are symbolic—no one is holding them accountable to it.

And as of now, the We Are Still In pledge is just a pledge: a public display of strength meant to alleviate the concerns of other nations. The hype sold by members is that this initial mobilization might produce some coordinated action, according to those I spoke with. Anne Kelly, senior director of policy for Ceres, a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainability and a coordinator for We Are Still In, says that the coalition came together so quickly that the game plan is still fuzzy. “There's just tons of potential partnerships and actions we can take,” says Kelly, “but this massive collaboration has never come together before.”

Timberland tells me it was moved to sign the “We Are Still In” initiative to “join forces with like-minded companies that believe business plays an important role in climate action.” Patagonia’s president and CEO Rose Marcario is more direct, calling Trump’s decision to leave the Paris agreement “cynical and short-sighted.” Nike CEO Mark Parker wrote in a public statement that he’s “deeply disappointed” by the withdrawal.

And this isn’t any of these folks’ first rodeo. The infrastructure is there, and that’s why it’s so critical that those from the private and public sector are coming together through We Are Still In. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is on board and represents a major American manufacturing hub, says he’ll work with local L.A. businesses and through the Climate Mayors committee spread the good word with, say, a mayor in Florida who can help businesses in their area get their shit together.

Garcetti calls out hip women’s brand Reformation as one of Los Angeles’ beacons of lights. The brand is part of Los Angeles’ sustainability council and, because of the California drought, found ways to make jeans with less water. “We're helping them share their practices” through things like Climate Mayors and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Garcetti tells me.

Really, what we’re looking at here is a giant global trust fall and while Trump may have walked away.

You can imagine, then, how We Are Still In will unite the public and private sectors on an even larger scale moving forward. Signatory Nike has signalled its ready to link up with its home state of Oregon, one of nine states also signed onto the pledge. Not only can the two work together to reduce total emissions coming out of Oregon, but Nike—which wants to use only renewable energy by 2025—can share its cutting-edge methods with less mighty public and private organizations. (Neither Nike or Governor Brown immediately responded to requests for comment.). And as Governor Jay Inslee of Washington told The New York Times, states have a massive impact on how businesses operate.

Joining the group also aligns the companies with billionaire Mike Bloomberg who, through Bloomberg Philanthropies, pledged to fulfill the $15 million contribution the U.S. would have made annually to the United Nations had it stayed in the agreement. We Are Still In also makes companies a part of a coalition promising to fulfill the abandoned promises of the United States. Bloomberg spokesperson Carl Pope says the way this’ll work is companies will submit their pledge as part of We Are Still In, the numbers will be crunched, and a plan will be made to figure out how the U.S. can still reduce carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, as it said it would through the official Paris Agreement.

Right now, though, We Are Still In is functionally a group of thousands yelling as loudly as they can about how good they’ll be at fighting climate change. This is good PR for all these companies, and most of these promises and gestures are symbolic—no one is holding them accountable to it. But then again, the Paris Accords themselves are symbolic and not legally binding. There are no consequences for countries if they don't keep their promise. So maybe it makes the most sense that We Are Still In is symbolic too. Really, what we’re looking at here is a giant global trust fall and while Trump may have walked away, over a thousand different entities are opening their arms.

It’s admirable that Nike, as well as the companies under the VF Corporation umbrella (including Vans) have pledged to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. It’s admirable that by 2020, H&M wants to use cotton only from sustainable sources, while Gap hopes to do the same by 2021. It’s admirable that Warby Parker is working on eco-conscious changes as granular as the weight of its try-at-home boxes, hoping to reduce their mass in order to put less strain on the vehicles that transport them.

How all these admirable actions will be coordinated between We Are Still In signatories is yet to be seen, but even in its initial form the pledge is still a massively important gesture. “In the face of challenge,” Scott Deitz, the vice president of corporate relations at the VF Corporation, said on Tuesday’s press call, “this group is coming together to overcome and meet the expectations of millions of people in this country and billions of people around the world, so yes, We Are Still In.“ Those four words are worth cheering, but it’s not the celebratory kind yet; it’s the holy-shit-we’re-down-big-at-the-end-of-a-game-that-is-literally-life-or-death kind. Hopefully this is the good part of the sports movie, though, where the brownie-point-earning upstarts finally stand up to and beat the big orange bully.